How to automate invoice processing: a step-by-step guide

Point supplier invoices to one mailbox or folder. Email attachments, supplier portal downloads and scanned paper all land there. This alone removes most 'where is that invoice' time.

A model reads each document and returns structured fields: supplier, tax number, invoice number, dates, line items, net, VAT, gross, currency, bank details. Layout does not matter; it reads a handwritten-looking invoice from a sole trader as well as a corporate template.

Rules run on every extraction: do net plus VAT equal gross, is the supplier in your master data, does a purchase order exist, is the invoice number a duplicate. Anything that fails goes to the exception queue instead of the books.

Validated invoices are created in the accounting or invoicing system through its API, with the PDF attached and the extracted values recorded. Billingo, Számlázz.hu and most cloud accounting tools support this directly.

The bookkeeper opens a short list, sees each document next to its extracted values and the reason it was flagged, and approves or corrects in seconds. Corrections feed back into the rules, so the queue shrinks over time.